Skip to content
Rubra Digital

SEO & local search

Being found when customers ask an AI instead of Google

Rubra Digital4 min read

Short answer

AI assistants are becoming a first stop for local recommendations, but they build their answers from the same web that search engines index. A small business that is described clearly and consistently on its website, its Google profile and its listings is the one an assistant can recommend with confidence.

Ask an AI assistant for a good pastelaria in Sintra, or who can renovate a small bathroom in Cascais, and you will get a short answer with a few names. For the businesses named, that answer is the new top of the search results. For everyone else, it is a closed door.

What has not changed

Assistants do not invent their knowledge of local businesses. They search, read a handful of sources and summarise them: the business website, the Google Business Profile, directories, review sites and local press. The foundations of local SEO still decide who appears.

What has changed

The answer is shorter. A results page shows ten links and a map with three businesses. An assistant often names two or three businesses and moves on. That rewards businesses whose information is unambiguous:

  • Clear statements beat clever slogans. “Small renovations in Sintra, Oeiras, Cascais and Amadora, free visit and quote, photos by WhatsApp” can be quoted. “Quality you can trust” cannot, however good it sounds on the hero image.
  • Consistency matters more. If the website, the Google profile and three directories show different opening hours, an assistant either picks one or hedges. Neither helps you.
  • Specific reviews travel. A review that mentions the dish, the product or the service gives an assistant something concrete to repeat.

What to do this month

  1. Ask two or three assistants about your business and your category in your town. Note what is wrong or missing.
  2. Fix the source: usually an outdated page, an old listing or an incomplete Google profile.
  3. Make sure each service has its own page that answers the obvious questions in plain language.
  4. Add structured data describing the business, its location and its hours.
  5. Check that your site does not block the crawlers these assistants use.

Practise what you preach

This site publishes a plain-text version of every page and an llms.txt file describing the business, and allows the crawlers behind the major assistants. It is the same work we do for clients under SEO and local search, applied to ourselves first.

Published by

Rubra Digital

Rubra Digital is a small digital agency, founded in 2019, that designs, builds and looks after websites and online shops for small businesses in Portugal, usually with fewer than 20 people, with clients in Germany too, and builds the automations and AI tools that take their admin out of spreadsheets.

More about Rubra Digital

Let’s make your website work harder

Tell us about your business. You get a free, no-obligation proposal from whoever would do the work, with an honest view of what to fix first.

Working with small businesses in Portugal since 2019.

Get a free proposal